Kamloops Airport staff are working on trying to attract more direct flights to Kamloops in the winter months, especially from Eastern Canada.

YKA Managing Director, Ed Ratuski, tells NL News that work began earlier this summer in the hopes of bringing more people to places like Sun Peaks.

“Sun Peaks is one of those where we foresee, especially this year or for the next couple of years, to get some better winter service to support the Sun Peaks market if people are still largely travelling domestically,” he said.

“We are largely looking at domestic routes where there might be markets emerging that we need to tap into looking for an opportunity where we might be able to have an airline offer service, probably from eastern Canada, to serve the Sun Peaks market in the winter.”

Ratuski notes his team is always looking to attract new airlines to Kamloops while also looking to see if existing airlines – Air Canada, WestJet, Pacific Coastal Airlines, or Central Mountain Air – can add service.

While airlines usually plan new routes a year or two in advance, he is optimistic that someone will be able to add a flight to Kamloops this winter.

“With the industry still in a large amount of flux, we’re looking to see if there was an opportunity to introduce something sooner,” he said, noting it would also help boost passenger volumes at YKA which have taken a beating because of COVID-19 travel restrictions.

The President and CEO of Tourism Sun Peaks tells NL News they are working closely with Kamloops Airport to try and make these new winter flights a reality.

“For us it would be focused from that mid-December till late March period, that’s where we really need the additional air support and would love some direct flights from Seattle and Toronto in particular,” Arlene Schieven said. “Those are the two main destinations for us where we’d like to see flights.”

“We actually had a direct flight from Seattle to Kamloops prior to 2008 and it was quite successful. We have a lot of second homeowners from Seattle and then Toronto there are a lot of skiers in that area, so it would allow us to build that market.”

Schieven says she is ‘cautiously optimistic’ about the upcoming winter season after a summer filled with wildfires and COVID restrictions.

“We’re hoping that we’ll have a much better winter than we did last year, but we don’t anticipate that we’ll have a full recovery at this time,” she said.